Encouraging kids to interact with special needs peers
from www.newsday.com by Beth Whitehouse
Beth Whitehouse writes about children and families.
Q. How do you teach your child the value of reaching out to classmates with special needs?
A. Perhaps your school can help. Some districts have programs to encourage interaction between regular ed and special ed students. The Albany Avenue Elementary School in Farmingdale, for instance, started an “Ambassador Team” this year. Teams of two regular ed students volunteer to be matched with each autistic child in kindergarten through fifth grade to play games together on the playground or in the gym.
One teacher has asked for student volunteers to stay inside for recess to play board games with a physically handicapped student who couldn’t play outside, says Mary McHale, a teacher at the school.
“It breaks down so many walls,” says Joe Valentine, school principal. It teaches the regular ed students that the special ed students don’t need to be pitied; that they are like the regular ed students but have tougher obstacles to overcome, he says.
If your school doesn’t have such programs, you could talk to an administrator about starting one. Older children have community service requirements for school groups such as the National Honor Society and National Junior Honor Society, and you could suggest your child meet such requirements by volunteering to work with sports programs for handicapped children.
You could talk to your child about qualities such as empathy, Valentine suggests, and the importance of developing character by lending support to people who don’t have it as easy as you do.
